Reprinted from TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE
Vol. 28, No.1, January 1987
© 1987 by The University of Chicago. AlJirights reserved.
Printed in U.S.A.
(:t
I
N ewsGathering by Mail in the Age
of the Telegraph: Adapting
to a New Technology
RIC H A R DB. K I E LB 0 W I C Z
With the question "What hath God wrought?" Samuel F. B. Morse
signaled the beginning of a communications revolution that eventually
altered the basis for gathering and relaying news. Until Morse demonstrated the practicability of the telegraph on May 24, 1844, most
transmission of news depended on one or inoremodes of transportation. The maps, from which editors obtained most of their news before
the invention of the telegraph, moved by foot, hOfse;b6al~-atitn,;ail.l
Even in the face of instantaneous communication by telegraph, the
comparatively primitive postal service continued to be of great value as
a news relayer. The mails adapted to the technological challenge by
finding a new niche in the larger; more complex communications
system. 2
For one striving to explain how technologies survive the challenge of
competing innovations, the concept of a niche may prove to be an
analytical tool with more than metaphorical value. Ecologists developed the theory of the niche to explain the dynamics of competition
and coexistence among organisms in an environment with limited
resources. Of special relevance here is the theory's power to explain
how a changing environment affects populations in a community.
~.
t
r
'.
DR. KIELBOWICZ is assistant professor in the School of Communications, Universityof
Washington. He is grateful to the U.S. Postal Rate Commission and to the School of,;,
Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, for their support of his
research..
ILong-distance communication apart from transportation was accomplished in two
ways before the telegraph-carrier pigeon and semaphore (or visual telegraph)-neither of which was used much by the press in the United States. Victor Rosewater, History 0/
Cooperative News Gathering in the United States (New York, 1930), pp. 30-33.
2It should be noted that this study deals only with postal services relaying news to
editors. The post office also carried the completed products-newspapers and magaziil~s-from publishers to subscribers, a subject not covered here. See Richard B.
Kielbowicz, "News in the Mails, 1690-1863: The Technology, Policy, and Politics of a
Communication Channel" (Ph.D. diss.; University of Minnesota, 1984).
© 1987by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.
0040~ 165X/87/2801-0001 $01.00
26
News Gathering by Mail in the Age of the Telegraph
27
. When a new species or form begins to compete for some of the limited
resources, certain consequences are possible" Niche theory predicts
that the introduction of a competitQrcan, in some circumstances,
promote specialization (i.e., exploiting a narrower range of resources), .
while, at other times, it can promote generalization (i.e., turning to new
resources) forsurvival,3
.
Looking to the physical or biological sciences fQr help in explaining
technological change is not as large a leap in logic as it might first
appear, Lewis Mumford, in Technics and Civilization, turned to geology
for the concept of a pseudomorph to explain cultural phenomena he
observed. 4 Niche theory, more comprehensive than concepts such as
the pseudomorph, has already proved of value in a number of the
social science disciplines, especially sociology, where it is an integral
part of studies of human ecology.5 One study of communicati<;ms
industries has directly adapted the concepts and quantitative methods·
of niche theory.6 Other authors examining intermediacompetition in
the mass media have invoked remarkably similar concepts. 7
Asa theory with some relevance ;to the study of the history of
. technology, it has several advantages. First, at least in the field of
ecology, the niche is a fully developed theory with an integrated set of,
cqncepts and propositions; some of these may be adapted,alongwith
the methodologies for studying them, in other realms of inquiry.
. 3lYebsler's Third New International Dictionary defines niche as "a site or habitat su pplying
these [life-coI}trolling] factors characteristic:ally necessary for the successful existence of
an orgariism or species in a given habitat" and "the role ofan organism in an ecological
community involving esp. its wayof Hfe arid its effed on the environment." For an
.overview ofthe ecologist's understanding of niche theory, see Eric R. Pianka, "Competition and Niche Theory," in Theoretical Ecology: Principles and Applications,2d ed.,ed.
R,obert M. May (Sunderland, Mass., 19a1), pp. 167~96.
1Geologists, MUlilfordwrote, use the term to describe a rock that retains "its structure
after certain elements have been leached out of it and been replaced by an entirely
different kind of material." Mumford described the analogue of a cultural pseudomorph
in which new forces, "instead of crystallizing independently into their own appropriate i7
forms, may creep into the structure of an existing civilization."Lewis Mumford, Technics
and Civilization (New York,1934, 1963), p. 265.
....
5For an application of niche theory in human ecology, see Amos l-{. Hawley; Human
Ecology (New York, 1950),pp. 42-46; and, in history, see Paul Coliiwaux, The Fates of
Nations. (New York, 1980).
'
6John Dimmkk and Eric Rothenbuhler, "The Theory of the Niche: Quantifying
Competition among Media lndustriesl"journal of Communication 34 (Winter 1984):
103,...19.
. .
....
.
7'1 n writing about the rapid succession of new media technologies in the 20th century.film, radio, television, cablecasting-analysts note that the newest innovation never truly
. threatened the existence of the established media.See, e.g., Sydney W. Head, Broadcast. inginAmerica, 2ded; (Boston, 1972),pp. 217-44; and Edwin Emery arid Michael Emery,
.The Press and America, 4th ed. (EhglewoodCliffs, N.j., 1978); ppA28'-29.
28
Richard B. Kielbowicz
Second, niche theory accounts for 'both change and-continuity, a feature with special attraction for historians. Third, as with most good
theories, it i~parsimonious: relatively few propositions provide a great
deal of explanatory power.
Niche theory can account for the persistence of an established technology when its viability is threatened by a competing innovation. The
dynamics of adaptation and survival have been explained as follows:
"When a new form [here ~ technology] invades an established COo1munity [of related technologies], for example; overlap between two or
more forms may initiallybequite high. Over time, however, the competitors may evolve differerltly in terms of resource' utilization. Such
differences lower niche overlap and the intensity of competition to a
tolerable level, thus allowing the forms to coexist."s
To apply niche theory in studying the effectof the telegraph on the
established form of news relay-sending information in postal transports-.involves, first, identifying the characteristics of the relevant
technologies.. In this case, news relay based On transportation faced
competition from news relay by electric communication; each had
certain advantages and disadvantages, explained below, that made it'
more or less desirable for news relay. Second, the economic and political (or policy) environment in· which these technologies operated must
be defined. The niche will be circumscribed by how well the technologies are suited to exploit th,ese resources. Applying niche theory in a
study of news gathering by mail is a useful reminder that technologies
depend on more than economic resources. In this case, postal policy as .
devised by Congress and supported by publishers (but not alwa.ys the
post office) maintained the mails as a viable alternative to the telegraph. In other words! favorable government policy compensated for
a technological lihortcoming-.the lack of speed-by subsidizing the
costs of postal news gathering.
'. On the Eve of the Telegraph.
'
News gathering using postal services had its rootsin the Very beginnings of American journalism. Before the 18408, most newspapers
emphasized nonlocal news in their c()lumns, apparently assuming that
reader~ learned about their oWn communities lfy word of mouth. 9 Even
though most papers concentrated on purveying news of the state and
federal capitals, from the major
commerdaltenters, andahout Euro.
..
SDirrtnlick~.nd· Rothenbuhler(n. 6 above),~p, 107.
9See David Russo, 'The Origins of Local NewsintheU .S. Country Press, .1840s)870s,"Journalism.Monographs; no. 65 (february 1980); pp. 1-4.
. .
...
.
:
. y7
I
News Gathering by Mail in the Age of the Telegraph
29
pean affairs, there were no formal news-gathering agencies until the
late 1840s. A few modest efforts had been made to obtain nonlocal
news using carrier pigeons, horse and railway expresses, and boats
meeting incoming ships, but it remained until the first successful press
association was founded in 1849 for one service regularly to seek out
and relay news for a number of clients. 10 Thus, throughout the 18th
and early 19th centuries, almost all nonlocal news-the staple for
newspapers---'-Came ,by post. A content analysis of newspapers published between 1820 and 1846 found that about half the news items
were clipped from other papers and about 15 percenteither were from
correspondents or were letters tothe editor; all these depended on the
mails. The remainder of the news was provided by local reporters and
editors. I I For the earlier period, some news wasbroughtby travelers-'a
haphazard way, of acquiring information.
The post office helped editors obtain news in tWo ways. Letters,
though norll)ally private intelligence, often conveyed information of
general interest. One of the earliest forms, of news gathering was
simply printing lettersreceived by the editor or others in the cOmmunity. Some of the earliest newspapers arranged for correspondents to
forward 'intelligence from distant locations. Later this practice WaS
formalized when papers sent reporters to mail dispatches regularly
from news-making centers, particularly Washington. 12
Most important, though, was a special service provided for editors by
the post office. Printers were permitted to exchange a copy of their
paper with every other paper in the country; the post office carried the
exchanges without charge. This practice arose as a ctistom in the early
1700s and was formally recognized in a 1758 policy statement by
Benjamin Franklin and William Hunter, joint deputy postmasters
general for the colonies. 13 The first revision of postal laws under the
Constitution, the Post Office Act of 1792, reaffirmed the editors'
privilege. 14
y.
"
IORichard A. Schwarzlose, "Harbor News Association: The Formal Origin ofthe AP,"
Journalism Quarterly 45 (Sumnier 1968): 253-60. '
IIDonald L.Shaw, "At the Crossroads: Change and Continuity in American Press
News 1820-'-1860," Journalism History 8 (Summer 1981):39.
12F. B. Marbut,News from the Capital (Carbondale; Ill., 1971),pp. 29-38.
3
1 Ruth L. Butler; Doctor Franklin, Postmaster General (Garden City, N.Y., 1928), pp.
57-58.
H"That every printer of newspapers may send one paper to each arid every other
printer of newspapers within the United States, free of postage, under such regulations,
as the Postmaster General shall provide~" I U.S. Statutes at Large 238. For a mbre
thorough discussion of the origins arid early history of the exchange privilege, see
Richard B. Kielbowicz, "Newsgatheririg by Printers' Exchanges beforetheTelegraph,"
Journalism History 9 (Summer 1982): 42.-48.
'
30
Richard B. Kielbowicz
Not surprisingly, more than one postmaster general was trouqled by
a policy that sapped the resources ofthe department. The matter grew
increasingly pressing as the department's deficits mounted after the
War of 1812. Postmaster General Amos Kendall complained to Congress in 1838 that some newspapers exchanged with 500-600 others;
most, he added, were cast aside and never used as sources of news. 15 As
the pretelegraphic era drew to a close, there were over 7 million
exchanges circulating through the mails each year. From these 7 million exchanges, the 1,634 newspapers in the country could cull news
.for their own columns. 16
The role of the post 6ffice as a news relayer is illustrated by the story
of how the Jefferson Inquirer, published in Jefferson City, Missouri,
learned of President William Harrison's death in 1841. A letter reporting Harrison's death on April 4 was mailed to an editor in Cincinnati
who informed a paper in Louisville, Kentucky. A copy of the Louisville
paper was mqiled to St. Louis. In turn, the St. Louis press copied the
story. Extras were issued, some of which were sent to Jefferson City by
steamer. The Jefferson Inquirer finally published the story on April
15-elev~n days after the event. 17 Other examples could be cited, but
they WQuid merely underscore the same point-that the mails, particularly exchanges, formed the backbone of news gathering before the
telegraph.
A Two-Step Flow: Geographic Niches
Although thetelegraphbegan to alter the basis of news gathering, it
hardly rendered exchanges obsolete. Just as the telegraph was proving
its worth to the press, Congress rewrote postal laws affecting the
carnage of newspapers but left the exchange privilegeintact.18 Atthe
same time, Postmaster General Cave Johnson, echoing his predecessors, asked Congress to impose a limit on exchanges. 19 As so many times
15 Amos Kendall to House Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, April 6, 1838,
in "Letter Postage," House Report No. 909, May 18, 1838, 25th Cong., 2d sess., p. 3.
161n October 1843, the post office delivered 596,760 exchanges. Assuming that the
October figures represented a typical month, more than 7.16 million exchanges circulated annually. "Report of the Postmaster General," Senate Report No. 50, January 18,
1844, 28th Cong., lst sess. The 1840 census counted 1,634 newspapers in the country.
William A. Dill, Growth ofNewspapers in the United States (Lawrence; Kans., 1928), p. 79. On
the average, therefore, each newspaper in the country received about 4,382 exchanges a
..
.
year.
17Estal E. Sparlin, "The jefferson Inquirer." Missouri Historical Review 32 (January·1938):
-162.
IBAct of March 3. 1845,5 U.S. Statutes at Latge 733.
19Annual Report ofthe Postmaster General, 1845, p. 858 (hereinaftercited as PMG Annual
Report).
(
News Gathering by M ailin the Age of the Telegraph
31
in the past, Congress took no action. Exchanges remained indispensable to much of the press for twenty years following the invention of
the telegraph for newspapers carried by post brought information to
editors not yet tied into the electric network. Much news now moved by
a two-step process: tarried by telegraph, stories were printed in towns
at the terminus of the lines and papers there exchanged with others.
Thisis analogous to niche theory's concept of sp~tial differentiation in
which potentially competing forms occupy different areas. 20
Upstate New York was an early beneficiary ofa two-step relay. One
of the first telegraph lines in the country connected Albany with Utica,
New York. The Utica Gazette carried its first column ofte1egraph news
from Albany on February 3, 1846, which prompted astute editors in
Buffalo, Rochester, and Auburn torequestsubscriptions or exchanges
to obtain more timely reports.· The next step was to hire a newsman in
Albany to prepare a digest ofnews from the Boston and New YotkCity
papers for transmission to Utica. Once in Utica, the Gazette printed
proof slips of the telegraphic news and mailed them by railway express.
The Gazette took advantage of a postal service thathadbeen'offered
since 1836 and that permitted editors to send news summari~s by
postal express in lieu ofexchanging entire papers; When the telegraph
reached Syracuse, the papers of that city assumed responsibility for
receiving reports and forwarding slips by postal express. 21
The experience of the Pittsburgh Gazette paralleled that of the Utica
Gazette. In 1846, the Pittsburgh Gazette began printing a column of
telegraphic news -that consisted largely of marketreports-a form of
inteUigence much' in demand.-As the westernmost source of timely
news from the East; the Gazette, through it.s exchanges, furnished news
to editors in the Ohio River valley and other parts of the West. Requests
for exchange copies of the Gazette were more than the editor could
handle, so he encouraged some papers to pay fer subscriptions. He
eventually persuaded several papers·to share the costs of securing the
news by wireP
As theteIegraphpushed westward, the two-step flow of news re~'
mained important tothe press. In Wisconsin, for example, the completion of the line to Milwaukee greatly reduced the time it took all papers
;n the state to obtain news from eastern cities. Before the telegraph
r~achedMilwaukee,news took twelve days to arrive from Washington
in the mail; after the telegraph, other dailies in the state, by e~changes
with Milwaukee, could carry news from the federal capital about three
i
,. t·
2°Pianka (n. 3 above),' p.169..
2lRichardA: Schwarzlose, "The Nation's First Wire Service: Evidence Supporting a
Footnote,"journalism Quarterly 57 (Winter 1980): 558-59.
.
.
.
. 22LCutler Andrews; Pittsburgh's Post Ga~ette (Boston, 19'6),pp~ 127~28. '.
32
Richard B. Kielbowicz
days after its occurrenCe. The Milwaukee Daily Sentinel carried telegraphic news, almost every day, from which other papers that received
the Sentinel in exchange could select. In 1848, the year the telegraph
reached Wisconsin, one week's telegraph receipts in Milwaukee
amounted to $127, of which newspapers paid $50. In two other Wisconsin cities, newspapers paid about half the money collected. 23 The
extension of the telegraph to Wisconsin mayor may not have affected
the quantity of news from distant places, but it certainly reduced the
time lag in news flow, even for those towns not yet tied into the
network..
By the e~r1y 1850s, all major U.S. cities except San Francisco enjoyed
telegraph service. Not 'surprisingly, the major trunks developed. in
about the same order as had postal routes many years before. As with
most forms of transportation and communication, the northeastern
axis... from Portland. Maine, to Washington, D.C.-·was blessed with
the first ~nd best service. A major branch followed the lines of commerceopened by the Erie Canal, from New York City through Albany
and Buffalo to the Great Lakes and beyond. Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee were part of the Great Lakes network; Pitts. burgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville anchored the Ohio River valley line.
The key port of New Orleans was linked by a line through Atlantic
coastal states as well as one running through the Mississippi valley, with
St. Louis as an important node. Significantly for the two-step flow,
towns in the hinterlands of cities waited longer to be tied into the
growing net, so that nonlocal riews still had to come by mail. 24
Satisfying the appetite for news on the Pacific Coast in the 1840s and
1850s was one of the successes ofthe two-step flow. Early California
papers ran stories from eastern cities that had been telegraphed· to
New Orleans, published there, and then carried as an exchange in the
mails down to Panama, across the isthmus, and up the Pacific Coast. 25
The path became less circuitous, though not much faster, when'the
telegraph reached St. Louis. The overland mail transported St. Louis
papers,with their columns of telegraph news, to California: 26 The .';much-celebrated'pony express provided a similar service for sixteen
23Bradford W, Scharlau, "LightningStr'ikesthe Press: The ImpaCt of the Telegraph
on Wisconsin Newspapers" (paper presented to the Association for Education in Jour"
na\ism; Boston, August 1980), p. 9.
24Allan rred, Urban Growth and City-Systems in the United States, 1840-186() (Cambridge,
Mass., 1980), pp. 151-65.
.
23Emerson Daggett, "History ofJournalism in San Francisco," iniriu:iographed report'
of the Works Progress Administration, San Francisco, 1939, 2:126.
.
. .26E. D. Smith,]t., "Communication Pioneering in Oregon," OregonHistorical Quarterly
39 (December '1938}: 353::":'54.
.
News Gathering by Mail in the Age of the Telegraph
33
months, bui, instead of entire newspapers, the rider carried highly
condensed digests of news in one-half-ounce slipsY News flowed from
west to ea~t, too. Some California newspapers prepared editions expressly forthe'overland mail, and, when they reached St. Louis, their
contents were s~mmarized and dispatched by telegraph to the East. 28
By steamer, stage, ~nd pony express, the mails thus relayed news
between the eastern and western coasts, until the. telegraph spanned
the continent in 1861. In a similar manner, exchanges helped ease the
transition into the age of electrical news transmission for other parts of
the developing nation-even Texas before it was admitted to the
United States. 29
I.
ANew Functional Niche
When the telegr~phtied a town into the expanding electric grid,
daily newspapers in the areabegan to take some of their news from the
wire. Speed, ine one advantage of the telegraph, was achieved only at
some sacrifice. Stories had to be summariied-even skeletonized and
sent in code-,·to save on the expense of transmission. High costs of
telegraphing stories also forced previously competitive newspapers to
combine and hire. a correspondent to prepare one story for all;
accounts of events became standardized, whereas multiple, varied
reports could have been obtainedfiom the less restrictive letters and
exchanges. The .constraints on telegraphic news gathering created an
important niche for excharig~sand letters-they permitted the: distribution of stories that were more complex, opinionated,andof
interest to narrower audiences than those typically sent by telegraph.
In niche theory, as news channels, the mails and the telegraph were
now functionally differentiated.
Trouble-prone technology and th~fitfuldevelopment of the industry retarded the telegraph'swide,.scale use by the press. in its first three
decades and left a nichefor the mails as an instrument of news gather-
,.
t
27 LeRoy R. Hafen, The Overland Mail, 1849-1869(1926; reprint ed. New York, 1969),
pp.189-90; RichardB. Kielbowicz, "Speedingthe News by Postal Express, 1825':-'1861:
The Public Policy of Privileges {or the Press," Social Science Journal 22 (January 1985):
49-63.'
'.
.
.
28S ee,e.g.,New York Ttmes, dctober 11,1858.
'.
29For additional examples of news relayaccomplisbed through a conjunction
the
telegra.ph and postal exchanges, see Sam Acheson, 35,000 Daysin Texas: A History of the
.Dallas News and Its Forebears (New York, 1938), p. 28; George S. Hage, Newspapers on the.
Minnespta Frontier, 1849·,·J860(St:Paul, 1967),p. 23; David L. Lendt, Demiseo/the
Democracy: The Copperhead Press in Iowa (i\mes, 1975), p. 16; Thomas H. Baker, The
Memphis Commercial Appeal (Baton Rouge, La:, 1971),' p.33.. '.
of
rP
34
Richard B.' Kielbowicz
ing. Six years after Morse's public demonstration of the telegraph, a
tangle of technologies competed for funding and development. Exploitiriguncertainties about patents, rivalcompanies'strung lines from
city to city, with the o~ject of selling stock often foremost in mind. By
1850, over fifty companies constituted the nation's telegraph network,
causing long delays when a message had to be transferred from one
lineto another. Mechanical breakdowns and vandalism-shooting at
wires and insulators became a common pastime-also combined to
defeat the instantaneous transmission of some messages. 30
Not surprisingly, then, the costs of sending information by wire
limited most use of the new technology to businesses and larger newspapers or combinations of papers. The Magnetic Telegraph Com-'
pany's New York (actually Newark)-to-Philadelphia line charged 25¢
for every ten words when it opened in January 1846. Charges increased with distance. Shortly after lines reached Milwaukee, a tenword telegram from Baltimore cost $1.40. 31 When telegraph service
became available within California in 1853, charges were sometimes as
high as $2.00 for ten words. 32 Before the Civil War, when transmission
rates were quite high, businesses and financiers made the heaviest use
of the telegraph, accounting for 50-70 percent of the revenues,
according to various estimates. The press, sometimes enjoying discounted rates, made uR at most 30-40 percent of the business; and
much of the news it obtained dealt with commerce (other kinds of news
commonly sent by telegraph will be discussed below); Personal messages probably generated less than 10 percent of the telegraph companies'revenues.33
.
The cooperation and eventual consolidation of dozens of independeht telegraph lines began in the early 1850s. As telegraph companies
forged alliances, busine"ss and newspaper customers encountered
fewer problems in the long-distance transmission of information. In
1856, the New York & Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company
reincorporated as the Western Union Telegraph Company. We'stern,/,
Union emerged from the Civil War poised to become the first m<:uor'
American industrial monopoly.34 The improved service brought by
30DanielJ. Czitrom, Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan (Chapel Hill,
N.C., 1982), pp. 3-29; Pred (n. 24 above), pp. 151-65.
3lRobert L. Thompson, Wiring a Continent: The HistOry ofthe Telegraph Industry in the
United States, 1832...;.1866 (Princeton,' N J., 1947), p. 44 and plate opposite p. 254.
32James D. Reid; The Telegraph in America, Its Fouriders,Promoters and Noted Men (New
York, 1879), p.500.
.
33Richard B. Du Boff,"Business Demand and the Development of the 'Telegraph in
the United States, 1844-1860;" Business History Rev~ew54 (Winter1980): 459-79.
34Thompson (n. 31 above), pp.289, 405.
I'
News Gathering by Mail in the Age of the Telegraph
35
corporate consolidations had one disadvantage for the press. The New
York Associated Press, long the dominant press agency, had shifted its
lucrative business among competing telegraph lines to secure the best
service and lowest rates. With the ascension of Western Union as a
virtual monopoly, however, NYAP lost its leverage. 35
The first presidential message to be telegraphed in summary form
illustrates the continuing value of the post office'as an instrument of
news gathering. President James K. Polk sent his declaration of war
against Mexico to Congress on May 11, 1846. The next morning's
Philadelphia Public Ledger carried an abbreviated version, sent by telegraph and railwayexpress, which ended with the note that the complete text would follow in the mail. Telegraphic speed thus came at the
expense ofcompleteness. Use of the telegraph also reduced the variety
of news reports available in competing papers, since the costs of news
gathering and of the stories themselves were shared by forming press
associations. ,Reports sent by telegraph from Washington and New
York were standardized, and eventually the dispatches found in the
papers of New Orleans, St. Louis, Charleston, Chicago, and other cities
were identical. 36 ,
A paper seeking something more than a homogenized account
shared byse"eral publications either bore the entire expense of telegraphic transmission itself or waited until a letter or exchange version
came by post. Keenly aware of the high telegraph rates-up to 1¢per
character for early dispatches-·editors admonished corespondents to
send the gist of a story by wire and details by mail. 37 Sometimes editors
resorted to the telegraph only to advise one another of important
articlescoming in th~ exchanges. 38 Stories of interest for their dramatic
appeal could be sent unabridged by mail to preserve the colorful
details. For this reason, Pittsburgh newspapers reported a sensational
1850 murder trial in Cambridge, Massachusetts, using accounts filed
by mail and resorting to the telegraph only to learn the verdict. 39 Even
in England, where distances and time lags in land transportation were ,,'
comparatively small, the London Times admonished its correspondents,
35Peter R. Knights, "The Press Association War of 1866-1867,"JournalismMonographs,
no. 6 (December 1967), p. 10.
.
36Marbut(n. 12 above), pp. 77-:-79. See also Thompson(n.31.above),pp. 217-39.
37Alexander Jones, HistoricSketchofthe Electric Telegraph (New York, 18.52), pp. 13Q.31; Thomas E. Dabney, OneHundred Great Years (Baton Rouge, La., 1944),p. 83.
380stnan C. Hooper, History of Ohio Journalism, 1793-1933 (ColuIllbus, Ohio, 1933),
p.6.
. 39E. Douglas· Branch,. "The Corning of the Telegraph 'to Western Pennsylvania,"
Pennsylvania History 5 (Jai}uary 1938): 27.
.
36
Richard B; Kielbowicz
"Remember that telegrams are for facts; appreciation and political
comment can come by pOSt."40
,One by-product of both the telegraph and the accompanying rise of
cooperative news agencies was the modern news form-the concise,
supposedly impartial, inverted-pyramid story.41 To the mails, therefore, was left the task of supplying features and political commentary.
This was facilitated by extending the exchange prIvilege to magazines
in 1852. 42 Magaziiles could now exchange with each other as well as
with newspapers. Some dailies and weeklies took the opportunity to
obtain free feature material. Graham's Magazine,for example, exchangedwith 2,100 country papers in 1853. Magazines appreciated
the notice they received in the press, but such long ex.change lists could
prove ruinously expensive. 43 Literary reputations were built in pan on
exchanges; such writers as Mark Twain and Bret Harte came to national attention because their contributions to small western papers
were picked l}.p and widely reprinted. 44 The mails, in short, functioned
much like modern feature 'syndicates thatsupplement the hard, timely
neWs now sent by teletype and satellite.
Long after telegraph lines linked major cities throughout the nation,
newspapers used ex.changes to obtain news from small towns in their
state.In a fictionalaccount, but one which reflects the actual practice of
many papers, Mark Twain describes how he culledexchangeson'the
Morning-Glory andJohnsonCounty Warwhoop: "He [the:editor] told me to
take the exchanges and skim through them and write up the 'Spirit of
the Tennes~e Press;'condensing into the article all of their contents
that seemed of interest."45 The Deseret News, published in Salt Lake
City, compiled a column headed' "State News" from exchanges' with
country pap~rs.46 TheMemphis Commercial Appeal, which had borrowed
liberally from many exchanges before the telegraph, by the 1870s used
them only for news of the small communities around the city;47 Coun.'
....'
"'.
'
'
.l
(;'.
4°Quotedin Robert W. Desmond, The Informa(ion Process: World News Reportirigto the'
Twentieth Century (Iowa City, 1978), p. 326."
,
41See three works by Don~ld L. Shaw: "News Bias and the Telegraph: A Study of
Historic'aIChange," Journalism Quarterly 44 (Spring 1967): 3-12, 31; "The Nature of
Campaign News in the Wisconsin Press, 1852-1916," Journalism Quarterly 45 (Summer
1968):326-29; and "Technology: Fteedomfor What?" in Mass Meaia and the National
Experience, ed. RonaldT. Farrar and John D. Stevens (New York, i971),pp. 64-86.
,, 42Laws and Regulations for the Government of the Post Office Department (Washington, D.C., '
195,2), 'p. 2&; ,
,
"
, 43Frank Luther Mott, A History ofAmeticanMagaziMs (Cambridge; Mass., 1938), 2: 12.
44Paul Fatout, Mark TWliin in Virginia Ciiy(Bloomingt:on, Ind., 1964), pp. xii, 102~4';-­
Alvin F. Harlow, 1JretHarte of the Old West (New York, 1943). p.243.
, 45"jou'niaHsm in Tennessee," in Editonal WildO!i!S (New -York, 1905)', p. 13.
46J. Cecil Alter, EarlyOtaJiJournalisin (Salt Lake City, 1938),p.304.,"
,
47Baker(n,29 above), p. 184.
"
,
.;
.'
.
P'
,
News Gathering by Mail in the Age of the Telegraph
37
try papers, especially the weeklies, remained especially indebted to
exchanges for their news. 48 A trade journal estimated that the typical
weekly in 1862 had a circulatio.n of 1,000 copies, ofwhich seventy-five
were exchanges. 49
Perhaps most-striking, the total number of publications exchanged
did not drop with the advent of the telegraph. Just a year before
Morse's successful demonstration of the telegraph, about 7 million
exchanges circulated annually. Eight years later, nearly the same number was still being carried by post. 50 In the interim, of course, the
number of newspapers and magazines in the country increased, which
meant tha,t the number ofexchanges per periodicaldedined. Unfortunately, the aggregate clata do not reveal which publications were making less use ofe}(changes(probably daily papers) or which continued to
rely on them (probably weekly newspaperscand magazines of various
frequencies) ;
A content analysis of daily and nondaily papers from 1847 to 1860
confirms that the press still relied heavily on the mails to obtain news.
Thirty percent of the stories were dipped from other papers that
presumably came as exchanges, and the mails also brought letters,
which furnished 6 percent of the stories, and contributions from
correspondents, which provided 10 percent. Duringthis period,only8
percent of the stories came by telegraph. The remaining 47 percent
were written by local reporters,the editor, or other sources. 51
That exchanges were essentially a cost-free method of news gather,;.
ing best explains their persistent~ into the age of the telegraph. The'
iIll provernent in the speed of mail transports was, another' reason for
their continued use by editors increasingly concerned with timeliness.
Where once all mail had moved at the speed of horses, more was being
carried by railroad. In 1845, at the outset of the telegraph age, horses
and horse-drawn ve~ides were used for 81.8 percent of the 35.6
million miles the mails were transported; rail and steamboat, mainly
the latter, furnished only 18.2· percent ofthe transportation. By 1860, ,;,
, railroads covered 37 percentofthe 74~7 million mail-miles-·morethan
any other single transport. Horseback and sulkies were used for 32.7
4BS ee, e;g.,RobertN:Elliott,Jr., The RaleighRegister, 1799~1863(Chapel Hill, N.C.,
1955), p.. 122;James H. Butler, "Indiana Newspapers, J 829-"1860," Indiana Magazine of
History 22 (September 1926): 324.
'9The Printer, February 1862, cited in David P. Forsyth, The Business Press inAmerica
(Philadelphia, 1964), p. 358.
50Postal auditorsreported that 7,073,548 exchanges were sent in!852,pMqA nnual
.
Report, 1852, p. 26. See note 16 above for the 1843 estimate.
51Shaw (n. 1 Labove), p. 39. The sum ofthese percentages is 101 percentbec'auseof
rounding error.
.
38
Richard B. Kielbowicz
percent, stagecoaches 25 percent, and steamboats 5.3' percent.:'z Even
though exchanges could not match the instantaneous communication
of telegraphy, the time lag in news flow declined as railroads were
pressed into service to move the mails, and postal services were made a
little more competitive with the telegraph in terms of timeliness.
Adjusting Public Policy
News gathering by mail exploited one resource-public policyi......
much more effectively than news-gathering services offered by the
telegraph. The privilege of exchanging newspapers· and latermagazines without postage was probably the most important feature that
enabled the mails to remain a viable means of news·.gathetingiItthe
face of competition from the telegraph. Once the telegraph proved its
worth as an instrument of news transmission, however, postaloffidals
stepped up tll,eir efforts to curtail the exchange privilege editors' had
long enjoyed.
.
.
Postmasters general looking for possible economies in postal operations recommended limiting and,in some <:ases, abolishing the editors'c
free exchanges. Postmaster General Johnson had asked Congress in
1845 to limit th~ numbers of exchanges a printer could receive. Taking
another tack, the postmaster general in 1850 agreed that ,carrying
exchanges was a desirable postal :policy but asked that Congress
appropriate the 'money lost to the department."3
The most vigorQus assault on continuing the policy of,free: ex'changes was launched by Postmaster General Montgomery Blair in hi's
1859 annual report. Exchanges, he argued, imposed artunreasoti·able
burden on the post office, and, as a device for obtaining news, exconsidered part ofthe business expense of pubchanges should
lishing' a' newspaper. It was, in, effect, a government' subsidy not
bestowed on other businesses: ,~'But as the governmenttranspoits
nothing free of charge to the farmer, the nierchant,orthe mechanic to
enable them to prosecutesuccessfuHy and econoniicaUY their respective .pursu\ts, why shall it do so for the journalist?". If this were a
worthwhile subsidy, he concluded, Congress should be willing to appropriate money from the Treasury to cover the costs of carrying
exchanges. 54 In response~ The Printer, a trade journal, editori~lized
against "imposing a tax npoIlcxchanges between publishers.. ' .. "55
Ii
be
2
Kielbowicz, "News in the Mails" (n.
:'3PMG Annual Report,1852, p. 17.
51PMG Annual Report, 1859,p.20.
.;'The Printer, March 181>9, p~264;.
5
2 above), p. 254.
ii'
News Gathering by Mail in the Age of the Telegraph
39
Almost thirty years after the invention of the telegraph, Congress
eliminated the practice of carrying exchanges postage-free-a policy
tharhad stood unaltered since 1758. In a sweeping bill passed on
March 3, 1873, Congress repealed all laws that provided for ~he transmission of any kind of postage-free maiU 6 ln the future, any editor
wQo received a publication had to pay postage. The trade magazine
Printers' Circular predicted that the free-~xchange.privilege would be
restored atthe next session of Congress and hoped that, in the meantime, the new law "will not be stringently enforced...." Another
magazine, the Quadrat, lamented the effect of the new law on the
country press but told editors how to arrange for exchanges with each
party paying postage on the publications it received. 57
Congress soon felt the wrath ofstate press (issociations,·legislatures,
and even some county and city governments. In 1873, at leastfour state
editorial associations-those in Missouri, New York, Mississippi, and
Wisconsin-.agopted resolutions calling on Congress to restore the
mailing privileges. 58 Soon after the Forty-third Congress convened, it
was besieged with petitions-.most representing rural interests-.imploring it to reinstate the old arrangements; several specifically asked
that free exchanges be permitted once again. 59
. Contrary to the general feeling of the press.. the New York Sun
welcomed the "wholesome requirement." "The Sun will cease to be sent
in exchange to any other paper, and will not receive exchanges. For all
papers in different parts of the country that we require we propose to
subscribe and pay,just like any other subscriber. ..." This promised to
be a more convenient and businesslike arrangement, the paper re:marked. The Sun, a city daily, probably made little use of exchanges
ahd could easily afford such a policy.60
Although Congress restored various provisions of the old law favorable to tble press, it left out the free-exchange privilege. The House
considered numerous petitions ~alling for the reinstatement of this
6
Not only was the free-exchange privilege abolished, but the aCt also required that
congressmen end their practiCe of franking mail and that weekly newspapers circulating
within the county of publication pay postage when previously they had been delivered
free. Act of March 3, 1873, 17 U.S. Statutes at Large 559.
;7Printers' Cin;u!ar, ¥ay 1873, p~ 93; The Quadrat, June 1873; p. 52.
;8William H. Taft, Missouri Newspapers (Columbia, Mo., 1964), p. 131; A; O. Bunnell;
New York Press Association: 1853-1903 (Dansville, N.Y., 1903), p. 18; Proceedings of the
Mississippi Press Association, from Its qrganization, May 1866, to May 1884 (Jackson, n.d;),
p. 70; Proceedings of Wisconsin Editorial Association (Madison, 1873), p. 36.
;9CongressionalRecord, 43d Cong., 1st sess., December 3, 1873-June6, 1874, ppo
28,..-4468,esp. pp. 185--,86,504,2380.
. 6Wew York Sun, June 4, 1873,in Clippings about Newspapers (Library of Congress).
5
\
40
Richard B. Kielbowicz
lqngtime privilege, and eventually it passed a bill with such a provision.
But the Senate version and conference-committee reports omitted any
reference to exchanges, and they were never mentioned during the
debates on the floor. 61 As the U.S. Postal Guide interpreted the Post
Office Act of June 23, 1874, "There is nothing in the postal law
authorizing the free exchange of publications between publishers."
Exchanges could still be mailed-if editors paid 2¢-3¢ per pound,
depending on the frequency of publication, for bulk'mailings. 62
Conclusion
The advent of the telegraph did not end the usefulness of the mails
asa means of obtaining news, but it did cauSe someadjustmenis and
dislocations. Both th~ change and persistence of the mails as an instn.i.ment of news gathering can be understood in tenus of niche theory.
The advent qf the telegraph can be thought of asa new form entering
an established communications'environment. Both it and other fdrms,
in this case the mails, had certain characteristics that determined the
extent to which they competed or carved out anothef-nic:neana coex-=- - isted.
.
Before the telegraph, a few publications,notably those in Washington, New York,' and other eastern cities, built national reputations
because their articles were reprinted by hundreds of other papers.
Their utility as exchanges, however, declined .as the telegraph pushed
westwardY Publications at the terminus of the telegraph in turn became the most eagerly sought exchang~s, spawning a two-step How of
news that relayed information until vi~tually the entire country was
tied into the electric network. Coexistence in this arrangement is
largely a function of the two news-gathering forms occupying different
geographic niches.
Even when instantaneous communication was possible almost everywhere, the mails continued to provide valuable news-gathering ser- i/'
vices for the press. The nature of the telegraph put a premium on
speed and brevity; the post office,on the other hand, still accommodated disc~rsive,complex, colorful; and opinionated articles sent
.
.
61Most of the maneuv~ring in Congress took place during the later parrotJune 1874.
See Congressional Fecord,43d Cong., 1st sess.,June 16, 1874-June 23, 1874, pp. 502~
5434.
62Vniied States Official Postal Guide (Washington, D.C;, April 1875),.p. 43.
6sAccording to economic historian Harold A. Innis. "Niles' Weekly Register ·ha~·
flourished with the exchange system and disappeared with the telegraph." "Technolbgy
alJd Public Opinion in: the United States," in The Bias of Communication, ed. IOriis·
' .
(Toronto, 1951), p. 169.
.
··f
L,!
1.
News Gathering by Mail in the Age of the Telegraph
41
either as exchanges or as letters. One channel of communication complemented the other because they occupied different functional niches
inthe system of news relay. Exchanges remained particularly attractive
as a means of gathering news as long as policymakers agreed to transport them free~ thereby shifting the cost from publishers to society.
But, once the policy changed in 1873 and the vital resource of government subsidy was withdrawn, exchanges declined' as an integral part of
news gathering. Some newspapers' continued to receive other publications but only by paying the regular second-class postage.
This case study represents a modest effort to apply niche theory in
studying technological change and persistence. More ambitious applications are possible, too. Where fairly complete quantitative measures of a technology's growth are available, it may be possible to utilize
niche theory's formal models as has at least one study of communications media. 54 The theory's ability to deal with change and continuity as
well as a fonn's'relationship to itl) human environment should make it
especially attractive to historians' seeking a dynamic' framework
through which to advance their inquiries.
~'.
64Dimmick and Rothenbuhler (n. 6 above), pp. 103-19.